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Makoto cleaning up the latrines made me recall that trainees and sometimes even regulars have some housekeeping work to do asides from practicing, just as in (a typical Japanese) school or in a dojo.

Spoiler:

...and oh, damn, corrupt officials seems to be sponsoring a gambling match of sorts, straight out of Running Man, taking bets to see if DES would win or not; they claim to be against entertainment when they're supporting another form of entertainment. Methinks also of the private dachas the Soviet high officials use for their personal pleasure, the episode from G.I. Joe in which Cobra created an R&R base in the Antarctic ("The Viper is Coming"), and of course, the fat bastard's inner sanctum in Equlibrium.

The casino also gave me some Hunger Games vibes. Betting on human life is a common trend in many dystopian fiction, so having it show up here is almost tradition. Makoto is one of my favorite kinds of character, and I like her for the same reason I like Black Rabbit over in Mondaiji, and many others. I don't love them in spite of being a loser, I love them because they're losers, but they simply don't give up. That speech Makoto gave before jumping was downright inspirational. DES simply didn't know that if they struck her down, she would become more powerful than they could ever imagine. Meeting a fan of hers aboard the asteroid seems like luck, but in my experience, there's no such thing as luck. Just literary motifs and repeated themes, all working together. If Makoto hadn't succeeded, one thing was for sure, they were all going to be a lot thinner. What I'm saying is, I enjoyed this episode. Having an AKB episode that doesn't focus on the concert, but still has it as an important element, made for a nice change of pace, while keeping to the themes of the series. Won't be long before Kirara for everyone!

The OP animation did change a bit in this episode. I wonder if it means they will be changing it from time to time, is if this is the "true" version, as it have less season 1 reused scenes than the one we got before.

Keep in mind back in episode 4 to 5, the initial animation of the OP changed.

The one thing I never expected was for this episode to be about Grumbly, but I'm sure not complaining, as she was the only understudy left without a big moment of her own (I think all of Sonata's cute moments through the show count as hers, though I wouldn't mind being wrong about that). It was a bit weird seeing the focus go to her inmediatly after the elections debacle, but then again, it's Grumbly, so her being pessimistic should come as no surprise. Hell, it's literally her thing. The bungee thing was a bit too sudden of a reference to me, but I sure as hell enjoyed Grumbly kicking the crap out of that lever after failing at first, right after gaining her Kirara at last. What a perfect way to showcase her appeal as the clumsy, often failing girl while still making her look like a badass.

Everything else was pretty well done and exciting as well, from Nagisa and co. infiltrating the base, to the mech hijacking, and I sure as hell wasn't expecting an illegal casino to come into play, and for it to be the reason as to why the first episode infiltration went so smoothly. What a bunch of shady businessmen the DGTO is. Aizendad doesn't seem to mind, even if he seemed to be getting a profit too, as he acquired more data on how the kirara work, in fact, he's probably been using the casino affair as a way to safely acquire that data without fear of running out of study samples for a while now. Basically, things are still going just as planned for the douchebag.

Now you have to wonder, what's next? With all the understudies seemingly finding their place, or at least not angsting or whining, the big ugly secret of the DGTO out, and just reaching the half point of the show, it looks like the perfect point for things to heat up. Or we could just have yuri antics. That would be nice in its way. Right..?

Details
-Dammit, Mimori! Is everyone trying to NTR Nagisa now?
-So, the mic sabers can cut through mechs, but not people? I read somewhere it has an stun mode. Can anyone confirm this?
-I'm surprised Chieri didn't pay attention to wearing the successors' outfit, but I suppose it's understandable when your best friends are infiltrating an evil stronghold.
-Those are some cutesy icons you got for codified talks, girls. Kinda want to have chibi Nagisa head as an avatar.
-Grumbly's kirara kinda looks like a water bear

Thanks for such fast responses. I love when this level of detail is put into a show.

Also, now I'm wondering how exactly Aizendad will use this data. Creating his own army of artificial kirara and hand them over to DEs so they can blow up Akibastar? Except the little ones need idols to work their magic, and that wouldn't sit very well with the no fun squad, unless he finds a way to make them work on their own or with a different type of "radiance".

Thanks for such fast responses. I love when this level of detail is put into a show.

Also, now I'm wondering how exactly Aizendad will use this data. Creating his own army of artificial kirara and hand them over to DEs so they can blow up Akibastar? Except the little ones need idols to work their magic, and that wouldn't sit very well with the no fun squad, unless he finds a way to make them work on their own or with a different type of "radiance".

As for Kawamori according to a Thomas Romain tweet from a few days ago he's also already working on his next project that hasn't been announced yet (Thomas is in the process of creating backrounds right now)

According to interviews on Aquarion Evol

Quote:

Kawamori doesn't like to do things as planned till the end, so the story changed a lot from the original plan. With that way of doing things they might end up changing even the setting on a whim. Okada worried a lot over it, but she found it fun. She was very sorry for the other writers, but luckily they were all people able to cope with changes.

There's no word of AKB0048 suffering from this,Aquarion was Kawamori's baby but it seems he let Okada have a bigger say in AKB0048.
In a french magazine he said that while he came up with everything in terms of setting (the entertainment ban,the way AKB0048 works etc) and even had the character designs done before there even was a script, he then went to see Okada with all the production designs and character designs and asked her what kind of plot she'd come up with in that setting.

On a sidenote,while Okada wrote the entire screenplay for S1 herself she's gotten help from a couple other writers so far this season (for this episode as well as ep15)

I would definatly welcome a S3 after "next stage" we could have a "final stage"!

There's no word of AKB0048 suffering from this,Aquarion was Kawamori's baby but it seems he let Okada have a bigger say in AKB0048.

Besides I remember that it was reported they needed to show the script to Akimoto (AKB's producer) to greenlight the project, which means there was a complete script from the beginning, or at least a draft.

Besides I remember that it was reported they needed to show the script to Akimoto (AKB's producer) to greenlight the project, which means there was a complete script from the beginning, or at least a draft.

I would hope he don't have much a say on it afterwards, don't want to things to be changed on the story plan because of some of those problems that been happening recently on AKB...